Entire sack of post lost - What is going on?

[MR2 Owners Club]

Over the years I have had various items go missing in the postal system, most of which I have been informed by Royal Mail were my fault rather disgracefully. This last fiasco has gone far beyond a joke.

I am an organiser for a car club and have taken responsibility for tickets to an event next weekend for not only the club I’m involved with but 2 other clubs. There is an event as Castle Coombe circuit it Wiltshire on the 16th May where I have organised a club stand and taken payment and booked tickets for over 50 people. These tickets have arrived with me and a full day was spent breaking this pack up into 50 envelopes, addressing each one using labels to ensure that the addresses were legible and a first class stamp placed on every one.

These letters, all in I7 envelopes, were taken straight to the local Post Office (Highlands Post Office, Coppice Drive, Northampton, NN3 6ND to be precise) at about midday on Thursday 30th April. They were handed to the clerk and immediately placed in the sack while I was present on the premises. Not a single one has arrived at the destination!

Let me put this into perspective. That is 54 tickets to an event, in individual envelopes and not one arrives? Let me put this another way. Each ticket costs £25 plus a £5 booking fee equals £1355 worth of tickets and 54 people asking for my head as YOU have managed to lose an entire sack of post! Not to mention over £30 of stamps.

My question is simple. Where are they and why aren’t they with their rightful owners? There are a LOT of angry people looking for me right now and the blame squarely rests on your heads. These were posted in plenty of time via first class mail (which granted has to have 7 days…oh, hang on – that’s today) and several member have paid an extra £45 to drive on the circuit which is also wasted if they can’t get in.

I want these found and I want these delivered. It is that simple. I paid for a service expecting it to go smoothly. I don’t expect an entire batch of letters to just vanish.

[NewPostieUK]

YOU have managed to lose an entire sack of post!

Who has?

This is a postman's forum, try looking for a Post Office forum.

[SpacePhoenix]

Have you asked the post office branch to have a check to see if they're still there? There won't be any way to track them as 1st and 2nd class aren't tracked through the system, tbqf you should really have used special delivery. Did you obtain a proof of posting when posting them?

[Deadly]

These letters, all in I7 envelopes,

I think this size envelope comes under large letter postage so were the correct large letter stamps used?

[TrueBlueTerrier]

YOU have managed to lose an entire sack of post! Not to mention over £30 of stamps.

My question is simple. Where are they and why aren’t they with their rightful owners? There are a LOT of angry people looking for me right now and the blame squarely rests on your heads.

No WE haven't, this is not a Royal Mail site, we try to make people aware by having this statement on every page:

We have no affiliation with either Royal Mail or the Communications Workers Union (CWU), except that most of our members work for Royal Mail and/or are members of the CWU.

However, if a whole sack has gone missing I can only think that not enough postage was paid and your customers will shortly be getting a grey surcharge card. Unless there was an accident or incident that destroyed the posted items I can't think of any other legimate possibility.

http://www.royalmail.com/personal/help- ... ht-formats" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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[MR2 Owners Club]

OK, I should clarify things - no doubt you can understand that I am very angry at the shambles that I have been faced with, especially with the undue grief...

I need to be clear - by "you" I refer not to an individual but to the company Royal Mail.

After about 3 hours on the phone, I think I have managed to trace one of these letter through to where it is. I also know exactly where the blame lies.


I took one envelope to a Post Office (Which I do understand is no concern of Royal Mail) and asked what postage I needed and bought what was sold at the point of sale. Now, the "official" Royal Mail stance is that it is the responsibilty of the customer to check the postage - that said when you ask for a price, you expect to pay that price. No different from shopping, from booking a courier - you ask for a price, you pay the price etc. Solution? Maybe train the Post Office staff properly?

As much as this isn't a Royal Mail failing, it is a Post Office Counters issue, what is a failing of Royal Mail is that out of 15 people spoken to this morning, 3 have received a "excess charge" card, the others have phone their respective sorting offices to find them sat there. How do people know these things have to be paid for? How has it taken a week for anything to come through?

I am sorry if I sound curt but this is a disaster from start to finish. I will be confronting the manager at the offending Post Office, mark my words but (and this was what really wound me up this morning) when speaking to Royal Mail this morning, the response I got was "You should have sent it special delivery - it's the only way that we can guarantree delivery"!

[Snaggletooth]

I need to be clear - by "you" I refer not to an individual but to the company Royal Mail.

"We" are not Royal Mail, or the Post Office, just a load of employees of the above who try to help customers in our own time. An actual complaint needs to be made to the relevant company or companies, if applicable.

I took one envelope to a Post Office (Which I do understand is no concern of Royal Mail) and asked what postage I needed and bought what was sold at the point of sale. Now, the "official" Royal Mail stance is that it is the responsibilty of the customer to check the postage - that said when you ask for a price, you expect to pay that price. No different from shopping, from booking a courier - you ask for a price, you pay the price etc. Solution? Maybe train the Post Office staff properly?

You might have a basis to make an official complaint to the PO on this, but you need to have your facts correct. If you took a complete envelope (i.e. containing all tickets and inserts that were to be sent) and the PO clerk measured it with the official template and weighed it with the official scales, and that particular item got surcharged, then you might have a case. This would not just be a case for PO customer services: potentially, the clerk has contravened the weights and measures act, and you can complain to your local trading standards. However, this could get muddied if you got the clerk to measure an empty or part-filled envelope, as potentially you have contravened the maximum weight or thickness for the stamp you have used once the envelope was full. This is very easy to do. Offically, you should take all the times to the Post Office after completion and then buy the postage, not the other way around.

[Lounge Lizard]

OK, I should clarify things - no doubt you can understand that I am very angry at the shambles that I have been faced with, especially with the undue grief...

I need to be clear - by "you" I refer not to an individual but to the company Royal Mail.

After about 3 hours on the phone, I think I have managed to trace one of these letter through to where it is. I also know exactly where the blame lies.


I took one envelope to a Post Office (Which I do understand is no concern of Royal Mail) and asked what postage I needed and bought what was sold at the point of sale. Now, the "official" Royal Mail stance is that it is the responsibilty of the customer to check the postage - that said when you ask for a price, you expect to pay that price. No different from shopping, from booking a courier - you ask for a price, you pay the price etc. Solution? Maybe train the Post Office staff properly?

As much as this isn't a Royal Mail failing, it is a Post Office Counters issue, what is a failing of Royal Mail is that out of 15 people spoken to this morning, 3 have received a "excess charge" card, the others have phone their respective sorting offices to find them sat there. How do people know these things have to be paid for? How has it taken a week for anything to come through?

I am sorry if I sound curt but this is a disaster from start to finish. I will be confronting the manager at the offending Post Office, mark my words but (and this was what really wound me up this morning) when speaking to Royal Mail this morning, the response I got was "You should have sent it special delivery - it's the only way that we can guarantree delivery"!

The envelopes were probably only just over the size or weight for a letter and the counter clerk evidently made a mistake.
Another time if checked at a Post Office it is to good idea to ask them to date stamp the stamps to prove they've been checked there and thus avoid the attention of Revenue Protection.

[Snaggletooth]

The envelopes were probably only just over the size or weight for a letter and the counter clerk evidently made a mistake.
Another time if checked at a Post Office it is to good idea to ask them to date stamp the stamps to prove they've been checked there and thus avoid the attention of Revenue Protection.

Surely that would be in complete contravention of the mail segregation rules?

[Lounge Lizard]

The envelopes were probably only just over the size or weight for a letter and the counter clerk evidently made a mistake.
Another time if checked at a Post Office it is to good idea to ask them to date stamp the stamps to prove they've been checked there and thus avoid the attention of Revenue Protection.

Surely that would be in complete contravention of the mail segregation rules?

So what are the mail segregation rules ?

[Snaggletooth]

So what are the mail segregation rules ?

Officially: a system to make the mail work more efficiently by getting the Post Office to separate non-reg mail into 3 different types of sack.

Unofficially: a way for the semi-privatised Royal Mail to screw money in fines from the publicly owned Post Office by creating a system which is pretty hard to get right in a busy customer-driven environment.

It quickly became obvious that the 3 bag system was arbitrary and bore little relationship to the way mail is segregated in mail centres, skewering the efficiency argument. Also, the communication of the system was poor and, in some cases, plain wrong, in both RM and the PO. Still, RM management persisted with it, because it earns them a couple of million a year in fines for almost no work.

As it relates to this thread: all letter and large letter sized items go in the letter bag, regardless of class of mail. All of the stamps must be left uncanceled in this bag (the reverse is true for the packet bags) unless the mail in question is paid for with a mixture of stamps and Horizon labels or it is registered mail, in which case the stamps must be cancelled on that item. If the stamp on an item was cancelled incorrectly (as you suggested be done earlier in the thread) and this was found at audit then the bag would fail the audit: only one mistake in a bag which might contain 200 letters fails the bag. A couple of failed bags a year and the office fails. Repeat across the PO network for a year and the PO pays serious money to RM.

[Lounge Lizard]

So what are the mail segregation rules ?

Officially: a system to make the mail work more efficiently by getting the Post Office to separate non-reg mail into 3 different types of sack.

Unofficially: a way for the semi-privatised Royal Mail to screw money in fines from the publicly owned Post Office by creating a system which is pretty hard to get right in a busy customer-driven environment.

It quickly became obvious that the 3 bag system was arbitrary and bore little relationship to the way mail is segregated in mail centres, skewering the efficiency argument. Also, the communication of the system was poor and, in some cases, plain wrong, in both RM and the PO. Still, RM management persisted with it, because it earns them a couple of million a year in fines for almost no work.

As it relates to this thread: all letter and large letter sized items go in the letter bag, regardless of class of mail. All of the stamps must be left uncanceled in this bag (the reverse is true for the packet bags) unless the mail in question is paid for with a mixture of stamps and Horizon labels or it is registered mail, in which case the stamps must be cancelled on that item. If the stamp on an item was cancelled incorrectly (as you suggested be done earlier in the thread) and this was found at audit then the bag would fail the audit: only one mistake in a bag which might contain 200 letters fails the bag. A couple of failed bags a year and the office fails. Repeat across the PO network for a year and the PO pays serious money to RM.

Thanks for the explanation.
I knew that for the packet bags stamps should be cancelled and knew that for registered mail they should be cancelled but I didn't know that all of the stamps in the letter bag, regardless of class of mail, must be left uncanceled.